Getting Real: Being Trans vs Having Trans Experiences
*Crossposted from My Blog.*
Lately I’ve been re-evaluating my concepts of “trans identity.”
I just read a post on the excellent blog Critique Of Popular Reason, about the use of trans and cis as adjectives rather than prefixes, which has sort of guilted me into cleaning up my use of the terms and being more meaningful in what I intend to convey when I use them.
I admit I’ve been haphazard in writing trans woman, transwoman, cis man, cis-man and so on. I’ve always realized in the back of my mind that each way of writing trans or cis represents a slightly different understanding of the terms, but I didn’t think it a big deal. Well, I do now, so the inconsistency stops today.
Here is what I’ve come to realize: As much as I talk about myself being a trans woman, I don’t honestly think of my being trans as an “identity”… so much as a description of my personal history.
I do not experience being trans in the same way I experience being black, for instance. For me, being black is very much an identity experience based on shared cultural experiences, shared language, and shared history having been born and raised in the United States among other black people. I am black not just because I am readable as black, not just because I was “assigned” to be black by larger society based upon my readability as black, and not just because that is how I am expected to identify my race on government documents and other demographic tracking forms. I am also black because my mama is black, because my family is black, because I am descended from the African Diaspora, and largely, perhaps ultimately, because I was “raised” black and because I am recognizable to other black people as black.
I do not feel quite the same way about being trans. For me, at least for right now, I am trans only because I was born into a society based on a truly shitty premise: that one’s reproductive organs predict and define the way in which you will experience yourself, that your genitals predict and define who and what you are, who and what you must grow up to be. I am trans because I was born into society that refuses to acknowledge the obvious fact that for many many people there is no direct correlation between their reproductive organs and the gendered bodies and the identities in which they find their most valid form of self expression.
To put it more simply… Society does not allow for being born with a penis and NOT feeling like that has anything to do with anything… other than having been born with a penis. That existing with a penis between your legs does not MAKE you feel like, think like, act like or identify as male… even when that same society makes every effort to force you to do exactly that,with its armada of rewards and punishments. (Of course the same is true of being born with a vagina and not feeling that necessarily connected to one’s being a woman).
Following this frame of reference, If I am to accept being trans as my identity then I must accept an identity which is based upon society imposing upon me its definition of me, externally, an identity with seemingly no other defining criteria than this particular experience of imposition. For me, an identity has to be based on much more than being in the same crappy boat as a lot of other people. I could define being black that way if I wanted… but I do not experience being black that way. For me, being black is a much fuller and more complex experience than a mere description of my racial phenotype and cultural history. I feel the same way about being a woman, as well. There is actually much more to my being a woman than other people’s perception of me and treatment of me as a woman. Or even a black woman.
But for being trans.. at this stage of my self-awareness journey anyways, it feels like something that is entirely about other people’s perception of me as trans, a mere description of my life trajectory having been assigned to be one gender but I vetoed and invalidated that assignment in favor of my own contrary self-knowledge and need.
I’m sure there is a much fuller experience of trans than what I list above. Certainly there is a unifying theme of the (apparently) uncommon drive to fly in the face of society’s explicit demands for conformity in favor of one’s own self-knowing. Time and again, I have experienced firsthand that instant bond of recognition and empathy between persons which is born of people living the same oppression. Especially, when it comes to being trans. I have definitely experienced community among my fellow trans people… so why do I feel so keenly that while being trans identifies my life experiences, it is not my identity?
Is it due to internalized transphobia of some sort? I know as I read this thru and come back to add this paragraph, what I’m saying sounds an awful lot like similar protestations I’ve heard: ”Being gay doesn’t define meeee, I’m just someone who happens to experience homosexual attractions…” etc. No that is not what I mean at all, I hope.
What I think I mean is that … so MUCH of my life, even to this day, actually revolves around accomodating the social consequences of my being trans…. but is mere oppression enough reason to take it on as an identity?
Personally, I feel I experience MUCH more blatant oppression around my trans status than I do with race. As far as life challenges go, being trans has been many times more difficult than being black and I probably think about it way more than I do race or any other zone of marginalization I live within. But is that due to my having a more multi-dimensional understanding of my blackness (identity, culture) than I do my transness (burden, stigma)? Or is it because I am loathe to acknowledge areas of privilege in my other identities (do I not experience being black as terribly oppressive simply because I am relatively privileged as far as my blackness goes, e.g. being light skinned, being middle-class, being from the U.S. etc…?) and wish only to attach the grand title of ”identity” to areas in my life I feel I can be more “proud” of?
Is it a lack of self-awareness or lack of appreciation for the complexity and positive reward of trans experience?
I’m not sure.. but these are questions that consume me on the daily. I am determined to sort this all out
This is really wonderful and intriguing. Thank you so much.
I feel hesitant to critique or add anything because being a trans woman is primarily the only way I experience “marginalized identity,” and I think that might inherently limit my understanding of the distinction you’re describing.
That said, I have a rather impossible question for you that I grappled with after reading this, if you feel inclined to answer it:
Assuming there were no external marginalizations of either, if you had a choice between being a cis woman or a trans woman, which would you choose?
If we say cis woman [or "woman born with a uterus, vagina, etc], then that would seem to make being trans a matter of biological inconvenience and simply a kind of bodily hurdle [disability maybe?] towards getting the body/identity that we need/want.
If we say trans woman [woman born with a penis and testes], then that would seem to indicate there is something essential about being *trans* that makes us who we are. And if that’s the case, how would that be distinct from the experience of identity you describe?
Again, I don’t mean this as a critique, and I really appreciate your post. But I’d love to hear how you might answer the above question.
Ophelia
1 May 11 at 4:44 pm
Thanks Ophelia.
Honestly, over the years I’ve spent alot of time pondering this exact question and my answer has changed over the years.
Basically, if I had to do it all over again I wouldn’t necessarily change the body I was born with if what I could change instead was the way the world responded to me in whatever body I was born with. If we’re assuming no marginalizations in conjunction with being trans, as you define it, then probably I’d just have preferred not to have certain gendered meanings attached to my body in the first place. Which, is probably the case in this hypothetical world free of marginalization.
While we’re indulging hypotheticals, let’s say I could go back to my childhood/ pre-pubertal self with the much better educated awareness of transition and gender that I have today… I would do many things differently and I would have made alot of different choices. I probably would still have preferred to look a certain way and/or feel more comfortable in my own skin than I ever could with the body I did have, but I no longer feel the need to wish away the physical facts and circumstances of my birth, per se.
If I were able to go back in time to oh, age 10 or 11, and intervene before puberty took hold, the vast majority of my body issues today would be a non-issue. If I had been as knowledgeable about surgical options and outcomes before I’d had surgery as I am now, I would certainly have chosen a different surgeon (ultimately) and perhaps a different age at which I’d had surgery (maybe younger, maybe older, who knows). THAT would have been more than enough. No need to re-invent the reality of my birth.. just the knowledge and the opportunity to make things the way I needed them the first time would have gone a long long way.
SO if I could have had that, I’m sure I wouldn’t have wasted as many years as I did wishing I had been born with the so called “right” body parts in the first place.
What’s really changed for me over the years is that I no longer buy the cissexist premise that genitals equal gender.. that vaginas are only “correct” in companion with a female identity and penises only correct in companion with a male identity. I know too many exceptions to that rule personally to believe that true, especially when I used to be such an exception myself.
Would I have pined for a uterus and ovaries even if I could have transitioned before puberty? Maybe. But I know cis women who live full lives without the same parts, women who have come to terms with not having these parts and who would see no point in even contemplating the question.
When I think about it in that light, that being a woman isnt about having the full “collector’s items” of woman parts, that women define their own womanhood with what they DO have, not with what they don’t have… I realize that’s good enough for me.
Jane Laplain
1 May 11 at 7:09 pm
I can relate to what you say. Personally I have trouble considering “trans” as part of my identity because I have the impression it doesn’t have much to do with how I identify now and more with how I was identified years ago.
I understand how “trans” can be a part of your identity and not just something of the past, but for me it’s more of a question of with who you construct things and in which groups you recognize than having “trans pride” or “internalised transphobia”.
Butch Cassidyke
2 May 11 at 5:45 am
@ …is it because I am loathe to acknowledge areas of privilege in my other identities…and wish only to attach the grand title of ”identity” to areas in my life I feel I can be more “proud” of? (pp) Is it a lack of self-awareness or lack of appreciation for the complexity and positive reward of trans experience?
These highly personal and profound questions, like the others you posed for yourself and your readers, resonated with me enough to examine my own sense of self, my personal experiences, and social history as related to my being transgendered. So, thank you for that. It’s not that I’ve never given any of this any thought before; it’s that you’ve helped me to clarify my identity inventory from a new perspective.
Given the hypothetical scenario of, what-would-you’ve-chosen-if-you’d-had-a-choice, it was actually rather simple for me sort this out for myself, after several decades of ambiguous and tortuous self-doubt, second guessing, inappropriate shame, etc. Although I would dearly regret losing any of my spiritual growth that I attribute to having experienced my entire life as trans in a hostile world – a huge part of what helped make me who I am – it’s a no-brainer for me, at least right now.
I am and always have been female, regardless of my XY chromosomes and resulting male anatomy – in spite of my contrary sex. If I’m never able to have SRS, I’ll still be female, that’s my gender and that’s a vital part of my identity, even more so than the cavalcade of my entire life’s experiences. It is innate, and it is immutably inseparable from who I am and would have been my gender regardless of what other history I might possibly experience. The only thing that I believe would’ve been different would’ve been how I happen to feel about my female gender, which makes me a woman, and how I feel about my gender and sex being incongruent – which makes my condition one of being transgendered.
I know that there’s a myriad ways of being trans, and that some identify as being a trans woman or a trans man or transqueer, etc. For me, though, I see being transgendered not as who I essentially am as much as a birth defect or condition I want corrected so that I can feel more comfortable in the experssion of and the experience of being a woman. Yes, I agree, not having a uterus or ovaries doesn’t make a ciswoman who has had a hysterectomy or a trans woman any less female or less of a woman. But as long as we’re talking about if-only scenarios, it has taken me many years to let go of my sorrow over the fact that I’ll never be able to conceive and give birth. I’d trade that ability for every cherished experience I’ve ever had in a heart beat – but that’s just me – and not just because those experiences have been few and far between.
To each, their own truth must bear witness to who they are or else would be. If given the chance to do it all over again, there is only one thing I’d ever actually consider having different – even though I’m quite aware that making such a choice would change absolutely everything. Given reality, however, I’m glad that I am trans, because if I weren’t trans I’d be a guy, and I haven’t much enjoyed pretending to be one most of my life.
Nothing against the stereotypically brawnier and more agressive sex, but that’s just not me – thank God.
In closing I guess I could summarize my own sense of identity this way: I am a woman who has had to live a transgender experience.
Embrace diversity in all its beautiful forms.
Love always,
Christy
Christina Shannon
2 May 11 at 1:31 pm
Thanks so much, Butch Cassidyke and Christina Shannon.
The comments have already opened up new areas I need to explore. Ophelia’s question came sort of out of left field for me, but in answering her I was surprised to learn that I no longer despise and resent being trans the way I used to. (Maybe there is hope for me developing a positive trans identity yet?)
It’s funny becuz there was definitely a loooong period in my life where I felt being trans was a cruel mistake of nature, an embarrassing medical condition at best. I was only able to associate it with the stigma it brought me and the way it separated me physically, socially and experientially from other women. I simply could not see how I could live a real life when every where I turned people were trying to stop me from being a woman and even my own body seemed to be on THEIR side.
My feelings have evolved over my lifetime, and especially over the last 20 years or so. I no longer experience an entire WORLD of people trying to stop me from living my life; now I better see those people, paradigms and institutions for what they are — intent on my annhilation — and I refuse to invest in them.
As for the topic of Body Dysphoria itself… I am only now coming to think of it as a completely independent issue from the experience of being trans, as weird as that may sound.
I always used to say that I could have lived my entire life alone on a desert island and I’d still feel wrong in my pre-transition body. But psychologically, I can no longer afford to conflate my own intensely personal experience of what my body should be with society’s expectations of the body I should have. It leaves me far too vulnerable to a worldview that wishes to see me destroyed.
Jane Laplain
3 May 11 at 6:19 am
[...] Getting Real: Being Trans vs Having Trans Experiences at Questioning Transphobia Here is what I’ve come to realize: As much as I talk about myself being a trans woman, I don’t honestly think of my being trans as an “identity”… so much as a description of my personal history. [...]
links for 2011-05-04 « Embololalia
4 May 11 at 11:03 am
I can relate to much of this and used to think of my own trans-ness in a similar way. But my own perspective has changed a lot.
No, I don’t think being trans is the only part of who I am. No, I don’t want to be described as trans at all times and I don’t think any trans person should have to be– which is why the space in “trans woman” and “trans man” and “trans person” is so important.
For a long time “trans” was a modifier that made me feel my gender was less than valid and that my body was wrong. It felt like a disclaimer. It felt like an apology.
That changed when I started to see “transgender” as just another adjective that describes me. I came to see it not as a modifier or descriptor of my gender, but of my life experience– and more importantly of the community I came to love.
At this point in my life I am strongly trans-identified, very very proud, and cherish sentiments verging on nationalism towards other trans people. I am not really sure what that sentiment is based on. Shared oppression is probably the only thing that it CAN be based on.
But I just feel so much love, so much fierce protectiveness, towards other trans people. I cannot help but feel we have something in common, even if it is only this one thing. And I want to see trans people feeling pride instead of shame, using the word “transgender” as a battle-cry or a “fuck you” instead of an apology.
Maybe sense of trans identity is based on something more than shared oppression after all. Maybe it is based on surviving that oppression. Maybe it has to do with in jokes and obscure references and a certain shared rage. It’s based on holding each other up.
Yeah.
Asher
4 May 11 at 12:12 pm
Very thought provoking and well-written! While I totally respect your experience, I feel a bit differently. I DO feel like being trans, for me, is about identifying with a culture or community, and not solely a description of my history or experiences created by coercively assigned labels. Both of those are only part (though big parts, for sure) of why I identify as trans.
I was kicked out when I was young, and finding trans communities, especially of sex workers, were some of the first places I ever felt part of a family. Claiming a trans identity helped me feel validated and connected to a history and shared experience. Where I’ve lived at least there are pretty well established infrastructures of trans people supporting each other, and that I think had a lot to do with it. As an organizer, I also tend to surround myself with trans folks.
I do also consider myself a woman, and not genderqueer / nonbinary. But I also feel like my identity as trans, on top of that (thus the space between trans woman) ties me to particular cultures and that’s very important to me, the same way my being working class or queer does. So I don’t think trans identity is only about shared oppression – it’s also about shared spaces and organized communities that are building positive alternatives to cis supremacist narratives. If that makes any sense. =P I guess for me, being trans is both about my history and my community.
Sadie Vashti
4 May 11 at 1:29 pm
I consider myself “bio female”.
Prior to transition living with a chronic depression that magically evaporated when I started ‘mones. Over time, I have come to appreciate who I am and who I am becoming. Believing (if you will) that my comfort levels with my body’s changes are a further indication of the fact that I am female. I don’t know if I consider myself “trans” in so far as it wasn’t until I transitioned that I felt comfortable with myself. If in fact, discomfort is an indication of being incorrect, then I guess I was ill prior to my transition.
I had no “trans experiences” per se. Just reaching out in desperation that proved to be correct. I don’t discount my preference for things female oriented, but I don’t accept them as being an indication of being trans by themselves.
Shelley
4 May 11 at 3:17 pm
I feel the exact same way, I have aspergers/HFA and that informs my identity far more than my being trans.
Samanth0r
4 May 11 at 5:38 pm
@Asher
Maybe sense of trans identity is based on something more than shared oppression after all. Maybe it is based on surviving that oppression. Maybe it has to do with in jokes and obscure references and a certain shared rage. It’s based on holding each other up.
Yeah.
Thank you so much for this. And Yeah. I dig it, man. When you put it this way I do feel so strongly protective of and identified with other trans people. Many times I’ve felt and still feel these are MY people. And yet when someone identifies me as trans I feel like “Oh no no no you’ve got it all wrooooong”… but I’m not always sure how. I need to resolve this psychic disconnect. And I suspect I need community with my fellow trans people to do it.
Jane Laplain
5 May 11 at 8:48 pm
@Sadie,
So I don’t think trans identity is only about shared oppression – it’s also about shared spaces and organized communities that are building positive alternatives to cis supremacist narratives. If that makes any sense.
Makes perfect sense. Thank you.
@Shelley
I had no “trans experiences” per se. Just reaching out in desperation that proved to be correct. I don’t discount my preference for things female oriented, but I don’t accept them as being an indication of being trans by themselves.
I would love to hear more about this. What does indicate “being trans” for you? Is it the physical fact of having transitioned or is there something else that accurately(?) describes your journey as a trans one?
I am also very curious to dissect the ways in which body dysphoria has been conflated with being trans as if they were the same issue, rather than two separate struggles working interdependently (at least as I’m coming to understand it). Do you agree?
@Samanth0r
Thank you!
Jane Laplain
5 May 11 at 9:00 pm
Your gender not matching the sex you were coercively assigned at birth isn’t all that’s needed to have a trans identity, I think. Ther are some people who shed it the second they can, that’s their right. There are others where being trans is a big part of their identity.
I have a friend who qualifies as a woman of color, has a mostly black family, but doesn’t consider herself black as an identity so much as how people perceive her and a way she faces oppression.
Z
8 May 11 at 7:57 am
I personally don’t ID as ‘trans’ because, like you said and like other commenters said, it’s a thing of the past. I find that, in a cis-centric society, it’s often just easier to have people accept me as a man instead of disclosing and then having them treat me as a third gender. I understand that some people ID as a third gender, but I most definitely do not.
I’ve been passing for a very very long time by now. Usually, when I say I’m trans, people assume that I’m a pre-everything trans woman because I look so masculine and so forth. I’m just… male. It’s irrelevant that I wasn’t born that way. I guess it helps that my family is supportive; my own sister says she forgets that I wasn’t born a boy. I *am* privileged; I acknowledge that.
I feel like, if other people understood that being trans doesn’t mean that I’m not male, I’d be more willing to disclose. But I definitely don’t think that society is at that point yet – the trans community included. I’d rather just live as male instead of worrying about if other people will psychoanalyze my masculinity for having long hair or think that I’m a wonderful and brave snowflake or something like that. Because… I’m not particularly brave or special or whatever; I just did what I had to do, and I was just lucky to have the resources that I did.
When I compare being trans to other minorities that I belong to… I’m deaf, and my whole family/community is hearing. When I’m around Deaf people, I feel rooted in the Deaf community. When I’m not, I just get by in the hearing world. No matter how I feel about my relationship to the Deaf community, though, there’s one constant: I’m not hearing and that’s very easily identifiable. Plus, my own parents will never understand my experiences.
Being trans is pretty similar, except that I have the added luxury of being able to choose to disclose. Since I don’t really want to stick out in that sense, I usually take advantage of that luxury. I do want to give back at some point, though – I remember how scary and isolating it was at first, so I want to one day mentor trans youth and support them through the process.
stealth
9 May 11 at 3:13 pm
@Z
I have a friend who qualifies as a woman of color, has a mostly black family, but doesn’t consider herself black as an identity so much as how people perceive her and a way she faces oppression.
I’m glad you brought this up. Since I wrote this post I’ve been thinking about how I had also gone thru different stages of black identity over the years. Even to the point of saying that I was “technically” black because most of my family was, but only because others insisted on seeing me and treating me as such. I’ve been speaking as if my identity as black has been a constant, when in fact I went thru many stages of racial self awareness, self acceptance, rejection and so on. Nearly all of it had to do with my trying to find a way to survive, psychically, being black in a world where that counted against me in ways I was too intimidated to name.
All of this is to say I would do well to continue comparing my own evolution of trans consciousness to other areas in my life where my self perception has grown.
Thanks for your comment, Z. :)
Jane Laplain
13 May 11 at 7:51 pm
@stealth
I feel like, if other people understood that being trans doesn’t mean that I’m not male, I’d be more willing to disclose. But I definitely don’t think that society is at that point yet – the trans community included.
This is exactly the reason why I don’t generally disclose. I am so tired of being “undone” as a woman everytime somebody finds out I’m trans. It took long enough for me to come to terms with the idea that being trans DIDN’T automatically make me less than female… I just don’t have the patience or strength to keep engaging people, cis and trans alike, who insist that it really MUST disqualify me as a woman.
That said, it helps tremendously that I usually pass for cis and that not many people these days actively try to undo my womanhood like they used to. That IS a privilege… I get to choose when I wish to be perceived as trans (for the most part). That kind of privilege has to inform my ideas about trans identity in ways I haven’t quite thought thru yet.
Thanks for your wonderful comment, stealth.
Jane Laplain
13 May 11 at 7:59 pm
I find this all interesting. For me, to incorporate something as an identity label means that I feel part of community with other similar people.
Where Asher says:
But I just feel so much love, so much fierce protectiveness, towards other trans people. I cannot help but feel we have something in common, even if it is only this one thing.
I just don’t. I feel like I never clicked with my local trans communities. I’m glad I met a couple people who helped me out with advice now and again. Online communities were more of a help, especially with resource referral, but I never felt a sense of these are my people. And not even a sense of neutrality, but occasionally an active sense of “whoa, these are NOT my people; BEWARE!” That even if we had this one thing in common, there was so much more standing in the way. Or at least in my experience, my scientist friends were way nicer about my transition than trans people were about a scientist in their midst.
I do wonder how much that’s related to the fact that I never personally experienced much resistance or negativity around my transition, and so DON’T have that shared oppression to build on. Maybe if I did, I’d feel more like the trans community is my community, or that I needed to identify as trans.
Or maybe I just didn’t meet the right trans people.
twostatesystem
14 May 11 at 3:02 pm
how you described your black identity pretty much erased mine. i was raised by a white woman and a black man who “acts” white, the majority of my friends are white, and most other people of color say offbeat things about my lighter skin tone and general racial ambiguity. your standard “qualifications” for what make you black make me feel like a complete outsider.
both of us are people of color, and we both happen to be trans. i think we both understand oppression. i’m not going to go completely out of my way by saying you should further mull over your words to see if they’re going to negatively affect someone, because this is your article, you’re allowed to say whatever you want and you can’t please everyone all the time. it just seemed kind of weird to me, i can’t really articulate it, sorry.
uh
16 May 11 at 5:04 pm
@uh
your standard “qualifications” for what make you black make me feel like a complete outsider.
I can totally see how my description of my identity came across as “this is what makes a black person black.” I totally apologize as that was NOT my intention.
I had hoped to make it clear that I experience and relate to my black identity in one way and I experience and relate to my transness in another way entirely. In doing so I probably made it sound as if these are the only acceptable definitions of black or trans. I certainly don’t agree with that.
I will think carefully on how to rephrase this to add a disclaimer. Thank you for your input.
Jane Laplain
16 May 11 at 5:45 pm
@twostatesystem
I do wonder how much that’s related to the fact that I never personally experienced much resistance or negativity around my transition, and so DON’T have that shared oppression to build on.
I am always curious to hear more whenever a trans person says that zie hasn’t experienced much negativity or oppression surrounding their transness. It’s not that I don’t believe it’s possible or I don’t believe them, it’s just so completely foreign a concept to me personally; one could say I’ve experienced fairly staggering levels of negativity and oppression surrounding my being trans at certain points in my life, and still I consider myself on the lucky end of the scale when I compare my own experience to that of some of my friends.
If it wouldn’t put you too much on the spot, do you mind sharing more about your own experience with transness? Have you ever experienced ANY negativity surrounding being trans? Do you feel your experience has been “privileged” at all when it comes to anti-trans negativity?
If these questions are totally obnoxious or out of line, I do apologize.
Jane Laplain
16 May 11 at 5:55 pm
Concerning “shared oppression”, I guess it’s also a matter of with who(m?) you discuss about it and with who you construct something.
E.g., while I’ve regularly been misgendered or asked “are you a boy or a girl?”, I guess I happened to share more about that with some cis dykes who got the same stuff than with other trans people, and maybe it’s a reason why “trans” is currently not much part of my identity. Maybe if I had met different people, it would be different.
Butch Cassidyke
16 May 11 at 7:12 pm
I can’t really help but feel like this is something that only those with binary privilege can debate. There is no stealth, no “after” where you’re accepted as your gender and no longer have to constantly explain yourself to near-strangers in the hopes that they treat you with respect, not for non-binary people.
Of course, this also may be related to why so many don’t feel like trans is accurate. Hm.
Z
17 May 11 at 10:10 am
Thanks for this. I have quite a strong identity as a trans person, possibly in part due to having mostly settled down in life (after a childhood of migration and changes in class status, as well as feeling like I don’t have a legitimate place within the communities I’ve got heritage with or was born into) shortly after connecting with trans and queer communities, having found that connection with it and being a part of that community a vital part of my survival and continued wellbeing as a trans person.
There are of course major problems with identity of shared oppression (one is that everyone’s experiencing crap but not everyone wants to share community and identity space with everyone else in it). And I start wanting to divest myself of trans identity myself sometimes when I see things turn into border wars about how we carve up trans people’s energy and activism and who’s allowed to be a part of it or not. But I guess for me my identity isn’t based on shared oppression so much as shared struggle/solidarity amongst people who *do* stick together, share resources, help sustain us or inspire us. Not necessarily the same sort of or sense of identity as Black identity probably, but what is?
Phoebe Queen
18 May 11 at 10:07 am
@JaneLaplain
Nope, don’t mind talking about it.
When I say I haven’t experienced negativity or oppression, I don’t mean in the general culturally received messages, or in being witness to nasty comments, or cringing at media portrayals of trans people way. Those all sort of hang in the air like a toxic miasma, and to some extent affect all people.
However, in terms of the real life people I know, my parents, my friends, my employers, my doctors, etc, no one said (or dared to say, who knows!) anything negative to me, and most people went out of their way to make things easy for me. For example, when I informed my graduate advisor that this was going to happen, he blinked, said ok, asked me if I could send more information because he wasn’t well educated, immediately started using my preferred name, and (with my permission) informed other people in our department of the correct name/pronoun. My parents were, for lack of a better word, sad for a while, not about my transition, but that they felt they had caused me unnecessary suffering, but they were completely accepting, and we have an excellent relationship, better, probably, than before transition.
And so in the end, for me, transition was just something that happened. I had a lot of internal struggle about what was true about myself, which was hard, but that’s not restricted to trans people. And after I’d reached the conclusion I did, it was not difficult for me to set up all my ducks in a row, and get through the medical and social steps I needed to.
And yeah, the fact that things were so easy is definitely related to the fact that I’m white, 20-something, male, seemingly binary-identified, relatively wealthy, highly educated, have reliable health insurance, and live in an area with a lot of resources for trans men. No doubt. All of the other heaps of societal privilege I’ve received for decades smoothes the way for the way that I don’t fit in.
twostatesystem
20 May 11 at 6:39 am
[...] to us, as baggage that other people carry on our behalf, for the rest of our lives. (See: “Getting Real: Being Trans vs Having Trans Experiences”.) Do you ever say just, you know, “woman” in reference to a woman of trans [...]
cis and/or feminist coverage of trans issues, however sympathetic « 13(BZ)
2 Jun 11 at 1:04 pm
I don’t know if I would say that feeling differently connected to different parts of your idenitities automatically equals having a less developed experience of one. The way we experience our connections with histories, communities, and identities is very individualistic, though it can share some commonalities. There isn’t a clear line between “who I am” and “what I am”, and our ways of naming and perceiving differences amoung people are inextricably tangled in cultural notions.
As the blond haired blue eyed grandchild of a person of color who decided to pass as white (something that was complicated by the fact that one of her sons most certainly can’t), the way I feel about my racial identity does fit more into society not allowing certain spaces area. That I was raised to think of myself as white by two parents who thought of themselves as white, but with some historical and cultural things seeping in, with an uncle who does not consider himself white and can’t pass as white, a cousin who sees herself as a quarter white, a grandmother who was born and raised on a reservation, my mother’s family seeing my father but not his brother as white enough, growing up in a rural conservative area near openly racist people while knowing that not all of your family is white but having your assertions of that fact met with disbelief-that sort of complicated history creates an awkward space. Societal standards don’t let me easily make my race Irish-Spanish-German-Cherokee, they need me to be uncomplicatedly white or not white. In a similar way, they need me to be uncomplicately man or woman. If not for the systems set up to put these defined, rigid spaces in place, we could be complicated people with a variety of histories, experiences, cultures, activities, etc. without the need to build alternatives to those defined identities in order to express that those spaces do not fit our lives.
darksidecat
12 Jun 11 at 1:46 pm